Photos above: Elsie Cook Yelton; Jane Bald in the Roan Highlands; Jane Cook (seated) shown with her daughters; Elsie Yelton's parents Nerva Sparks Cook and Flem Cook;

Jane Bald

  Woman sets record straight on mountain

By Michael Joslin
Press Correspondent

BAKERSVILLE, N.C. - Elsie Yelton would like to set the record straight on Jane Bald in the Roan Highlands.

Responding to a recent Johnson City Press article on the Roan Balds and the naming of Jane Bald, she said she knows the facts, since she is the granddaughter of Harriet Cook, the woman who actually died shortly after being carried from the bald.   Harriet and Jane Cook grew up down the road from Dogwood Flats, the area where Elsie lives on Cooktown Road in Mitchell County.

"Jane and Harriet were sisters.  They had two sisters who lived on the Tennessee side of the mountains, and they had planned for a long time to go across the mountains to visit them.  It was getting late fall.  They had planned to visit earlier in the season, but Harriet had the milk sickness and had to put it off," Elsie said.

The sisters were just two of George Cook's 21 children.  Married twice, their father raised two families.  Another sister, Judy, had married a Civil War veteran, Tom Ledford, in 1863.  Although she never had any children of her own, she held the large family together, raising several of her siblings' children, including Elsie's father, Flem.

Judy felt strong foreboding about the proposed trip and tried to talk the sisters into staying home and putting off the journey.  Although Harriett seemed to have recovered from the milk sickness, Judy knew the illness could recur under the stress of the trek over the high mountains.

But Jane and Harriet were bound to go.  They yearned to see their sisters Lannie and Madeline in Carter County, and the delay because of the sickness only increased their wish to make the trip.  Judy held the hand of Harriet's 2-year-old son, Flem, who later became the father of Elsie.  They watched the sisters start out happily, walking with a younger relative, Sylvester Cook.

"I don't know how long they stayed.  I know they wanted to visit both sisters.  I'm not even sure where they lived.  I think one lived in Ripshin; one lived in Roan Mountain, Tenn.  On Nov. 16, 1870, Jane and Harriet started back.   My grandmother, she couldn't hardly make it.  She got weakly and faint," Elsie said.

The weather changed rapidly, as it is apt to do in mid-November.  Blue skies gradually filled with clouds.  The temperature dropped rapidly as night came on.   Harriet's steps grew slower and slower as she struggled up the heights.  The dizziness and nausea of milk sickness returned.

"Harriet just made it up to Jane Bald.  She collapsed under a pine tree.   They had nothing to make a fire.  The wind turned real cold.  Jane got more and more worried, but there was nothing she could do.

"The wind turned real cold.  Harriet would talk and mumble.  Jane didn't have any idea of the time.  Then sometime in the night Harriet stopped talking.   The frozen ground spewed up around them," Elsie said.

"You know Jane was scared because they was panthers and wolves in this part of the country.  In 1870, this was a wild kind of place.  I would have died of fright," she said, shaking her head.

With the first glow of morning, Jane's hope revived.  The rising sun found her hurrying down to the valley, seeking help.  She found it at the log home of Charley Young who lived not far from Carver's Gap.

"Jane was about froze to death when she got down there.  They got a wagon and put the bed - mattress and stuff - into it, and put Jane back in the wagon in that bed.   They took the wagon as far as they could go, then they had some men carry Harriet down to the wagon.  She was still alive.  They put her in that feather bed," her granddaughter said.

This same bitter time, far down the mountain at Dogwood Flats, Judy was beside herself.   Somehow she sensed the desperate situation of her sisters.

"She was just hysterical," Elsie said.

Under her goading, the men on Dogwood Flats hitched horses to a wagon and started up the road to the Roan.  Just as they began the climb, they saw a wagon coming.   It was Charley Young with Jane and Harriet.

"Just shortly after they got her here to Dogwood Flats, they got her settled and she died.  Harriet was 24 years old.  My daddy had a good memory.  Judy told them that his mother was 24 years old when she died.  He was born in 1868, he was 2 years old when she died," Elsie said.

Harriet was buried in the cemetery near the bottom of Cooktown Road.  Through the years, her headstone has vanished.  Now Elsie has a general idea where her grandmother lies, but no one can point out the exact place.

Jane, who gave her name to the mountain, lived on and on.

"After that experience the people started saying, 'You know - up on Jane's Bald.'   She died in the 1940s.  She just lived and lived.  She got so in the last years she couldn't hear thunder, she got so deaf.  She could read still; her eyes stayed good," Elsie said.

And up till the end of his life in 1964 at the age of 96, Flem Cook kept a clear memory together with his strong, upright body.  So Elsie Cook knows the true story of how Jane Bald got its name.

Photos to left of article: Two views of the rock slab on the summit of Jane Bald, a favorite resting place; Harriet Cook is buried in the cemetery near the bottom of Cooktown Road; Jane Cook, front row, far right, with her family, including her two daughters and their children.

Webmaster's note: From the March 29, 1999 edition of the Johnson City (Tennessee) Press.  Reprinted with permission.  This page was last revised on March 08, 2007.

The "milk sickness" referred to above is a disease caused by drinking the milk of cows poisoned by eating certain kinds of snakeroot (from Appalachian Trail Guide to Tennessee-North Carolina, Eleventh Edition).  And...Kathy Bilton (webmaster of  Appalachian Trail Home Page), supplied this definition for White Snakeroot:

White Snakeroot.  Also called Snakeroot, Richweed.  Latin name Eupatorium rugosum Houtt. E. ogeratoides L.f. and L. urticaefoli.  Poisonous plant.   Contains a toxic, unsaturated alcohol called tremetol combined with a resin acid.   Causes "trembles" in cattle and other livestock.  Milk sickness is produced in humans by ingestion of milk, butter, and possibly meat from animals poisoned by this plant.